At the point at which we dehumanize our enemy, our own humanity is undone. Love your enemy and love yourself, that all can live together.
Love
What is the purpose of life?
When all is stripped away, when money is laid aside, when aspirations are lost, or found, when life begins, and when it ends, what’s it all about? What’s it all for?
Love.
Paul, in the Bible, describes love. He says it is patient, and kind – it doesn’t envy, or boast. Love never fails. Life is meaningless without love.
But what is love?
Is love that attraction you feel for that guy over there, or that girl? Is it that power within that might lead you to die protecting that little girl, or boy? Is it the power of friendship: of helping one another – of listening to one another, and sharing in each other’s joys and struggles?
All of these things, and more.
There is a deeper kind of love: there is a deeper searching for love.
There is God.
Beyond our human kind of love, vital in its own right, needed in life, and in death, is God’s kind of love.
God’s love is all encompassing, and all-consuming. It demands our all, and in turn gives us our all back again, though changed.
To gain God’s kind of love, we need to give up our lives: in order to truly gain them.
Love is an offering: love is the source and reason for life.
God is Love.
There are two reasons for living – two callings greater than we are in life, that Jesus gave to us:
Love God, and love humanity – even our enemies.
Love: it’s the only way to truly live.
How can we know God? The beauty of friendship.
How can we know God?
It might be a sense of God’s mind, or of his heart, beyond humanity’s mind and heart. It might be the grasp of the complexity and beauty of the Universe, or the wonder of a new born child. It might be the joy of a vast and wonderful landscape before our eyes.
Some experience God as Father: the source of our life, and our provision, and an ever-present source of comfort. Some look to him as Master: and, relative to us, he is the Master – of life, of death, and of love. Some see God as Saviour: the one who can make us right, restore our broken hearts, and change our wrong into what is right.
For me now, the joy of knowing God is found in friendship. Why friendship? He allows me to be who I am, though he calls me to be better. He gives me space to work through my struggles, grasping the fragility of my humanity. He beckons, but does not force.
Friendship means choice.
The beauty of friendship is the beauty of the freedom we have been given: to choose, between what is right and wrong – to choose who it is we want to influence the direction and formation of our hearts and lives.
I choose Christ: the Master of Goodness, in offering his own life for us – my Friend.
Who will you choose?
The Christian Gospel from a kiwi perspective…
Okay, guys – I’m pretty excited about this: I’ve decided to walk through the New Testament gospels, the accounts of Jesus, and translate into our terms. Use this post for your comments about the page linked below.
I’ll share my own Christian perspective of Jesus: you are free to do with it what you will. I’m not sharing out of the scholarly authority of a theologian, (though I do have three theology papers with Carey Baptist College 🙂 ), or the designated authority of an ordained priest, nor am I trying to displace either one: rather, I am seeking to translate what I have already gained from these.
If you want to study the Bible, go for it, and tell us what you find! I’d recommend a good Study Bible from any Christian bookstore, and maybe a concordance: I found these resources really valuable when I was searching for God.
For my part, I ‘grew up’ in my Christian journey with the NIV Study Bible – so if I use quotes, it will be from this. But my style here will be to evoke: for me, Christianity, and Christ, are at their heart deeply spiritual.
Join me! Share your thoughts along the way. Let’s do this together, as we do life together.
I’ll be writing on this page:
http://kiwichurch.kiwi/the-christian-gospel-from-a-kiwi-perspective/
If you want me to keep you posted on updates to this Blog, please sign up using the box at the top and to the right. I’d love to see you! If you want to have a two way conversation about this topic, try using this Facebook post below. (This blog doesn’t notify about responses, while Facebook does.) If you want to have a conversation about another topic, let me know through the Facebook page. 🙂
Pull up a chair, and a coffee/tea/hot chocolate (beer? 🙂 ), and let’s see what Jesus has to say.
A Call to Disarmament.
Disarm: it just makes sense!
Best not to become the very the thing we fear.
Nuclear weapons in the world
From: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat
‘Love your enemy.’
Sometimes the most profound self-defence can lead to an even more violent defeat.
We need to learn to love our enemies: they are human too, with the same vulnerabilities, the same weaknesses; the same fears.
‘Love your enemies,’ so that all of us can live together in peace.
His Eye is on the Sparrow
Okay, guys: I’ve fronted up and done it – my first audio recording. It’s all about song choice, right? I was timid, but then discovered a genre: Gospel. Kinda figures. right? 🙂 It’s a cappella, too (voice only), so if it’s a new one on you, it’s a new one on me too!
Hope you enjoy!
Masculinity and Femininity
Here’s a meaty topic: masculinity and femininity – what’s it all about? What do kiwis say? What does Christianity say?
What makes a man a man, and a woman a woman? I’d say in some ways, in some situations, both masculinity and femininity have been quite seriously beaten up.
What do you say? What does it mean to be a man or a woman?
What is humanity?
Sometimes we lift others up; sometimes we pull them down.
Sometimes we understand: sometimes we don’t see the limitations of our own understanding.
Sometimes we show kindness; sometimes we show self-defence.
Sometimes we assert; sometimes we block – and sometimes we just don’t give a toss.
There is a time to love, and a time to hate: but sometimes we hate all too easily.
What is humanity, but dust in the wind?
Sometimes we are but dust, blown in the wind:
Blown by the forces of our own vulnerabilities.
Yet what a profound chemisty takes place, when dust is raised by Light…
When the inanimate is infused with life.
There is a time to love…even a time to love our enemy.
There is a time to hate…even a time to hate our own weaknesses.
There is a time to fall…
And then there is a time to get back up again.
What is dust, but potential?
What is death, but a chance for a greater life?
Christianity? It’s all about Christ.
Christianity is built on Christ.
The Word of God, the Bible, the Book to read, is Jesus Christ: the Word made into flesh – the Revelation of God in the form of a man.
If we want to know about God, we can look at Christ. The boundaries of our definitions of God, our understanding, our theology, our spirituality, can be formed on Christ. If we who are Christian disagree with each other, we can look to Christ.
We are all brothers and sisters, with different ideas, different outworkings, different spiritualities: we are all unique, and human.
But Christ was the unique Son of God: One with God. Jesus makes God known to us: the wine can be seen clearly through the wineglass.
Through Christ we also can connect to God – through God’s Spirit, we can taste the wine of God for ourselves. Through Christ, we can see our own humanity more clearly – through Christ we can live, and breathe, and have our being.
I may love, as a human being: but with Christ, I can Love.
The Church is the Body of Christ: those people who have connected to Christ, by God’s Spirit – those people who love God, and Christ.
Worship is love of God, in many different forms: it is the love of God, through music, through a service, through the help offered to our neighbour, through the internet in poetry and real conversation.
Prayer is connection with God: through words, through wordless moaned need, through searching for God, through wrestling with God in pain and suffering, through inspired thought and feeling to be more than we are – through life, and through death.
Communion is connection with God: through the profundity of joining in Jesus’s sacrifice – the offering of his own body and blood in order to save us from our own flaws.
The Spirit of God fills us: the Spirit of God empowers us to be more than we are.
Christianity is Love: the Love of Christ, to seek to save humanity; the love of Christians for Christ, offering themselves to God in return.
Christianity is Light: Light, bright, lifted up high for all to see – Light, shining in the Darkness, shining in our darkness, that we might be changed and come to know God, in our hearts and minds, and become more like him.
There is a higher place: a place to aspire to, a place to find; a place dwelling with the mind and heart of God.
God can be found through Christ.